Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring a Book Launch for Series Founder Christopher Luna at Angst Gallery on December 13, 2018

Ghost Town Poetry Open MicFeaturing A Book Launch for Christopher Luna’s first full-length volume of poetry Message from the Vessel in a Dream (Flowstone Press)

Note: Due to the venue’s concerns about limited seating, the evening will be split into two sessions. Christopher will deliver two readings–at approximately 8pm and 9:30pm. To accommodate as many people as possible, he will also be available to sign copies of the book from 5-6pm. There will be eight open mic slots open for each half of the event, for a total of 16 open mic readers.

The book launch and open mic reading will be hosted by Printed Matter Vancouver co-founder Toni Lumbrazo Luna and Printed Matter Vancouver author Tiffany Burba (Meet Me Where I left You, 2016)

Join us for the Portland Book Launch at Like Nobody’s Business on February 23.

Collage Art by Christopher Luna for Message from the Vessel in a Dream

Flowstone Press announces the release of Message from the Vessel in a Dream by Christopher Luna, Clark County, WA’s first poet laureate and the founder of Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. Luna’s first full-length volume of poetry spans 20 years, and favors prose poetry and collage poems assembled and arranged using found materials. The book is dedicated to Carlos Santana, the guitar virtuoso and eponymous “vessel” who gifted Luna with the only line of poetry he has ever received from a dream.

How many Christopher Lunas are there? The bard, the community dynamo, the scholar, the compassionate one, the jazz quartet, the father & lover, the world of a man: all and more are speaking in this book. So many perspectives to experience here, so much to learn about literature, attitude, action and beauty. The maestro of Ghost Town has created a bustling, radiant and necessary environment. — Dan Raphael

Christopher Luna served as Clark County, WA’s first Poet Laureate from 2013-2017. He has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press for Northwest writers. He and Lumbrazo Luna co-host Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, the popular Vancouver, WA reading series he founded in 2004. Luna’s books include Brutal Glints of Moonlight, GHOST TOWN, USA and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978.

Collage Art by Christopher Luna for Message from the Vessel in a Dream

completely still
seemingly emotion-
less yet blowing
notes to charm
succeeding ages
it matters little
whether one studies
flow or counterpoint
so long as eventually
the instrument is raised to the lips

you make your appearance
known through some creator
neither Duke nor Trane
ever revealed the source
a wisdom too precious
to put a name to
something not unlike the sound of the heart
beating in the chest of your firstborn

listen to the wind
as interpreted
remember how his hips’
involuntary Poughkeepsie shimmy
show’d you how it was done
never forget promises made
in the quiet of the early morning
priorities set straight
a brick wall stared down till dawn
experience cool breeze adrenaline release
and never forget you learned to listen
don’t forget to breathe

Channel Z (circa 1989)

suddenly static in my own time in your own time beware a tear can appear a rip a slash through the static in a moment and suddenly too suddenly you are not wherever you are but then again and there may be no reason why but there you are in the lavender shorts the garment that stuck around not wanting to miss a moment of this crisis this chaos this crisis of faith this fundamental fissure in the unseen scripture you rarely regarded as worth your time that time static that age static in my attic laughs in a darkened kitchen and you did not then and you do not now believe do not believe do not believe in anything but love

Intend to Attend

A beautiful chaos, this life. A world of pure potential. Tomorrow the discomfort index will be quite high. The weight of too many goddamn outbursts strung around my neck like an albatross. Ghost glimpsed at the periphery. Undefined blur caught by insufficient retina. Fractals behind the eyes. The moment’s gonna get you. Nurture it like a serpent to your breast. Like a neutron caterwaul. Moments away from a fatality. Skeleton falling apart. Filled with the seeds of all the troubles and blessings of existence, but also provided with the sustaining virtue, hope.Intend to attend. Herb Stokes.

A beautiful chaos, this life. Vishal Khanna.

A world of pure potential. Translated dialogue from the film Poetry, directed by Chang-dong Lee.

The weight of too many goddamn outbursts strung around my neck like an albatross. Leah Noble Davidson.

Fractals behind his eyes. Doug Marx.

The moment’s gonna get you. Wayne Shorter.

Like a neutron caterwaul. Katharine Salzmann.

Moments away from a fatality. Jae Luna.

His skeleton was falling apart. Daniel Skach-Mills.

Filled with the seeds of all the troubles and blessings of existence, but also provided with the sustaining virtue, hope. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 23.

This is a deeply personal business, and it demands respectBruce Springsteen

This Professor Lorenz is a hypnotist as well as a horticulturalist. It’s a geography of the spirit for him. Writing this thing on communicating with the divine spirits. A million birds came to [the] window. . . Felt he was on the same beam, man, tuned in the same. Millions of birds, man. What they really pay you for is to be as present and alive as you can be. We create the illusion of stasis. You’ve got to destroy that mattress. It has to be rebirth on a nightly basis.

This Professor Lorenz is a hypnotist as well as a horticulturalist. Dialogue from The Corpse Vanishes, 1942.

It’s a geography of the spirit for him. Shelby Reece.

Writing this thing….millions of birds, man. Charles Mingus.

We create the illusion of stasis. Narration spoken by spoken Jake (David Mazouz), the brilliant troubled child in the 2012-2013 TV program Touch.

You’ve got to destroy that mattress. Dialogue spoken by Kirsty Cotton, the female protagonist played by Ashley Laurence in the 1988 horror film Hellbound: Hellraiser II.